And an excellent example of film noir for a genre that doesn't lend itself to the treatment.
I especially recommend this if you don't know Professor Bernard Quatermass or don't think you can sit through a BBC serial abridged for the silver screen. It also has no place in the bargain bin among the B- or Z-movie horror shows or direct-to-video-or-Web travesties. For starters Acting happens here...
Many would dismiss Brian Donlevy's performance, but few users appear to take issue with the distinctly (and lone) American accent if they don't mind the truly odd dubbing for the female lead. Fewer know Donlevy hailed from County Armagh. But this actor had chops, if the character was supposed to be a driven intellectual bully I could think of few better to portray same, and if his performance gradually sets your teeth on edge the best send-up is by Donlevy himself in Preston Sturges's The Great McGinty.
The ensemble cast is balanced and complementary. Spot a fairly young Dame Thora Hird and Lionel Jeffries and a far younger Gordon Jackson. Val Guest's direction is positively spot on and at times channels Val Lewton, tense, taut and inexorable in its leaving just enough for your imagination (unlike his Quatermass 2 aka Enemy From Space but very much like The Day the Earth Caught Fire). And you will not take your eyes off Richard Wordsworth, who communicates his character's increasingly possessed soul without a single word spoken.
I've seen nearly all the other Quatermasses, including Andre Morell in the broadcast "Pit" and Dean Jagger's Quatermass Who Wasn't. This was the first I'd seen so many years ago. It remains the best. Savor it.
I especially recommend this if you don't know Professor Bernard Quatermass or don't think you can sit through a BBC serial abridged for the silver screen. It also has no place in the bargain bin among the B- or Z-movie horror shows or direct-to-video-or-Web travesties. For starters Acting happens here...
Many would dismiss Brian Donlevy's performance, but few users appear to take issue with the distinctly (and lone) American accent if they don't mind the truly odd dubbing for the female lead. Fewer know Donlevy hailed from County Armagh. But this actor had chops, if the character was supposed to be a driven intellectual bully I could think of few better to portray same, and if his performance gradually sets your teeth on edge the best send-up is by Donlevy himself in Preston Sturges's The Great McGinty.
The ensemble cast is balanced and complementary. Spot a fairly young Dame Thora Hird and Lionel Jeffries and a far younger Gordon Jackson. Val Guest's direction is positively spot on and at times channels Val Lewton, tense, taut and inexorable in its leaving just enough for your imagination (unlike his Quatermass 2 aka Enemy From Space but very much like The Day the Earth Caught Fire). And you will not take your eyes off Richard Wordsworth, who communicates his character's increasingly possessed soul without a single word spoken.
I've seen nearly all the other Quatermasses, including Andre Morell in the broadcast "Pit" and Dean Jagger's Quatermass Who Wasn't. This was the first I'd seen so many years ago. It remains the best. Savor it.